Plimer appalled by mine plan, ICAC told

Ian Plimer, pictured, says he told John Maitland that his training mine proposal was “absolute madness” at a meeting in November 2007.
Photo: Peter Stoop

by
Michaela Whitbourn

Prominent geologist and climate change sceptic
Ian Plimer
has told a ­corruption inquiry he was appalled by a proposal by former union leader John Maitland for an underground training mine in the NSW Hunter Valley, adding that he believed he had “killed off" the plan in 2007.

Professor Plimer, a former chair of geology at the University of Newcastle, told the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Thursday that Mr Maitland had pitched the idea to him at a meeting with then NSW Labor mining minister
Ian Macdonald
on November 5, 2007.

The former academic was appointed to the board of two of mining magnate
Gina Rinehart
’s family companies last year and was a member of Mr Macdonald’s minerals advisory council at the time of the meeting.

“I was quite appalled, really," Professor Plimer said of the proposal.

The ICAC is investigating the circumstances in which Mr Macdonald gave a $100 million coal exploration licence to Doyles Creek Mining, a company then chaired by Mr Maitland.

The licence was granted without a competitive tender at a lavish dinner in Sydney in December 2008.

Mr Maitland, a former national secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, and his associates were shareholders in the company and made millions of dollars from the decision.

Top bureaucrats in Mr Macdonald’s department have given evidence that they regarded the concept of the mine as a “stalking horse", or sham, to gain access to a lucrative coal resource.

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Professor Plimer said he had told Mr Macdonald and Mr Maitland that the idea was “absolute madness".

“I think I pretty well killed it off," he said. It would be dangerous to send university students down a mine and he thought it was a “somewhat naive attempt to address a skills shortage".

Later, the inquiry heard that Mr Maitland had asked the then general secretary of the mining and energy division of the CFMEU,
Peter Murray
, to write a letter of support for the mine using a false title. The CFMEU’s national president,
Tony Maher
, had refused to write such a letter on the union’s behalf.

The July 7, 2008, letter to Mr Macdonald was written on CFMEU letterhead and described Mr Murray as the chairman of United Collieries, a mining joint venture between the union and
Xstrata
. Mr Murray initially denied that Mr Maitland had written the letter for him, but he changed his evidence after he was shown a June 26, 2008, email from the former union boss setting out a draft of the letter.

Mr Murray left the CFMEU in December 2008 and started working as a consultant for ResCo, which was later renamed Doyles Creek Mining, in early 2009. He took up shares in the company in about June that year. He told the inquiry the letter was mistakenly written on a union letterhead. Asked by ICAC commissioner David Ipp, QC, why the letter said United Collieries had been briefed on the training mine plan when he had “no idea" of the size of the mine, the number of students, the cost and other essential details, Mr Murray said: “That’s a relevant point."